BRAIN

BRAINA JOURNAL OF NEUROLOGY

REVIEW ARTICLE

The use of visual feedback, in particular mirrorvisual feedback, in restoring brain functionV. S. Ramachandran1 and Eric L. Altschuler1,2

1 Center for Brain and Cognition, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0109, USA

2 Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Newark, NJ 07103, USA

Correspondence to: V. S. Ramachandran,

Center for Brain and Cognition,

University of California,

San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive,

0109, La Jolla,

California 92093-0109, USA

E-mail: [email protected]

This article reviews the potential use of visual feedback, focusing on mirror visual feedback, introduced over 15 years ago, for

the treatment of many chronic neurological disorders that have long been regarded as intractable such as phantom pain,

hemiparesis from stroke and complex regional pain syndrome. Apart from its clinical importance, mirror visual feedback

paves the way for a paradigm shift in the way we approach neurological disorders. Instead of resulting entirely from irreversible

damage to specialized brain modules, some of them may arise from short-term functional shifts that are potentially reversible.

If so, relatively simple therapies can be devised—of which mirror visual feedback is an example—to restore function.

Keywords: mirror visual feedback; phantom limb; phantom pain; hemiparesis; complex regional pain syndrome

Abbreviations: CRPS = Complex regional pain syndrome; MVF = mirror visual feedback; RSD = reflex sympathetic dystrophy

IntroductionThree somewhat artificial dichotomies have bedeviled neurology

since its origins. First, there was a debate over whether different

mental capacities are sharply localized (‘modularity’) or are they

mediated in a holistic manner? Second, if specialized modules

do exist, do they function autonomously or do they interact

substantially? Third, are they hardwired or can they be modified

by changing inputs, even in adult brains? (And, as a corollary, is

damage to the brain irreversible in the adult or is any recovery

possible?)

Countless generations of medical students had been taught

that functions are localized, hardwired and damage is usually

permanent; although there had always been dissenting voices.

But a paradigm shift is now underway in neurology with an

increasing rejection of the classical dogma. The shift had its early

beginnings in the work of the late Patrick Wall, and evidence for

the ‘new’ view of brain function was marshaled by a number of

groups, most notably by Merzenich et al. (1983), Bach-y-Rita

et al. (1969), Fred Gage (Suhonen et al., 1996) and Alvaro

Pasqua Leone (Kauffman et al., 2002). Their studies provided

evidence both for strong intersensory interactions as well as plas-

ticity of brain modules. It is noteworthy that all of these studies

were on adult brains; contradicting the dogma of immutable brain

connections.

In 1992, we introduced the use of mirror visual feedback (MVF)

a simple non-invasive technique for the treatment of two disorders

that have long been regarded as permanent and largely incurable;

chronic pain of central origin (such as phantom pain) and

hemiparesis following a stroke. A host of subsequent studies

were inspired by these findings—utilizing visual feedback

conveyed through mirrors, virtual reality or, to some extent,

doi:10.1093/brain/awp135 Brain 2009: 132; 1693–1710 | 1693

Received January 4, 2009. Revised April 23, 2009. Accepted April 24, 2009

� The Author (2009). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain. All rights reserved.

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even through intense visualization (which would be expected to

partially stimulate the same neural circuits as the ones activated by

MVF). We will review the efficacy of MVF—based on recent clin-

ical trials—followed by speculations on why the procedure works,

what future applications it might have, and what its broader

implications are for neurology.

The procedure is not miracle cures by any means, but even if

only a small proportion of patients is helped, they would be of

enormous value given the high incidence of phantom pain and

stroke; one-tenth of mankind will suffer from stroke-related paral-

ysis and more than two-thirds of patients suffer from phantom

pain after loss of a limb. Moreover, even if the procedure benefits

a minority of patients, it is likely to pave the way for future more

completely effective therapies once we understand the variables

involved.

Phantom limbsWhen an arm or leg is amputated, many patients continue to

experience the vivid presence of the limb; hence the evocative

term ‘phantom limb’ coined by Mitchell (1872). In addition, a

large proportion of them also experience severe intractable pain

in their phantom that can persist for years after amputation. The

pain can be burning, cramping, crushing or lancinating. It can be

intermittent or unrelenting, severely compromising the patient’s

life. Some patients become depressed and even contemplate

suicide. Over 30 procedures have been tried for phantom pain

ranging from ineffective but harmless procedures like hypnosis,

to invasive brain surgery. Typically, these therapies are either

ineffective or only slightly effective. Most have never been eval-

uated in placebo-controlled clinical trials (e.g. sham surgery)

despite the fact that pain is notoriously susceptible to placebo.

In the early 1990s, we performed two experiments to explore

the nature of phantom limbs and the origin of phantom pain

(Ramachandran et al., 1992; Yang et al., 1994). The results of

such experiments paved the way for the discovery of MVF.

Plasticity of connectionsIn one of our early experiments, we recruited a 19-year-old man

who had lost his left forearm in a car accident 3 weeks prior to our

seeing him. He was mentally lucid and neurological examination

was unremarkable. He experienced a vivid phantom arm which

was intermittently painful.

We then had the patient seated on a chair blindfolded and

simply touched him with a Q-tip on different parts of his body

(Ramachandran et al., 1992).

We asked him to report what he felt and where. For most parts

of the body he reported the location of the sensation accurately.

But when we touched his ipsilateral face, he reported with con-

siderable surprise that he felt the touch not only on his face—as

expected—but also on his missing phantom hand. Touching

different parts of the face elicited precisely localized sensations

on different parts of the phantom arm. The margins of different

fingers were clearly delineated and there was a crudely

topographic organization. Stroking the cheek was felt as stroking

on the phantom and tapping was felt as tapping.

Inspired, in part, by physiological work on primates demonstrat-

ing an extraordinary malleability of topographically organized

maps in S1, we came up with a conjecture to explain why VQ

(and other patients like him) experience their phantom being

touched when their ipsilateral face was touched.

There is a complete topographic map of the contralateral skin

surface on the post-central sensory strip (S1) of the parietal lobe

as depicted in the famous Penfield homunculus (Fig. 1) (Penfield

and Boldrey, 1937). This map provides the vital clue for it shows

that the face representation in the map is right next to the hand

representation. When the arm is amputated the hand region of

the cortex does not receive sensory input so it is possible that the

Figure 1 Penfield sensory (left) and motor (right) homunculi (Penfield and Boldrey, 1937).

1694 | Brain 2009: 132; 1693–1710 V. S. Ramachandran and E. L. Altschuler

sensory input from the face ordinarily destined to go exclusively to

the face area of cortex now ‘invades’ the deafferented hand

region. As a result, touching the face not only activates cells in

the face area as it should but also activates the hand area, which

is then interpreted by higher brain centers as arising from the

phantom hand (Fig. 2).

The referral was also modality specific in some patients: Water

trickling down the face was felt as ‘trickle’ down the phantom.

A drop of hot water on the face elicited highly localized heat in

the phantom; an ice cube felt cold on the phantom and the phan-

tom vibrated if a vibrator was placed on the jaw. In other patients,

however, touch alone is referred but not temperature suggesting

that different tactile modalities can sometimes be uncoupled

during reorganization.

We tested these ideas by using magnetoencephalography

(MEG) to map out S1 topography on the side contralateral

to the amputation compared with the ipsilateral hemisphere.

As expected there was a massive invasion from the face area to

the hand zone (Ramachandran, 1993; Yang et al., 1994). For

further discussion of neural plasticity and phantom limbs see

Ramachandran and Rogers-Ramachandran (2000).

This result was the first demonstration of large-scale reorgani-

zation of topography in the adult human brain with highly specific

perceptual consequences.

These psychophysical and brain-imaging results were replicated

by several groups and additional evidence was also marshaled to

support what we have called the ‘Remapping theory of referred

sensations’ (Table 1).

(i) After leg amputation, sensations are referred from genitals

to phantom foot (Ramachandran, 1993; Aglioti et al.,

1994). This is consistent with the anatomical proximity of

foot and genitals in the map (Penfield and Boldrey, 1937).

(ii) After amputation of a finger, sensations are referred from

the adjacent fingers to the phantom, and intriguingly, a

reference field of a single finger was found on the ipsilateral

cheek (Agliotti et al., 1997).

(iii) Imaging studies (e.g. Kew et al., 1997) find functional

connectivity in adjacent somatopic sensory map cortical

regions correlating with clinically reported referred sensation.

(iv) After severing the trigeminal nerve (which supplies the face),

a map of the FACE was found on the hand; the exact con-

verse of our effect and a striking vindication of what we

dubbed the ‘remapping hypothesis’ of referred sensations

(Clarke et al., 1996).

(v) Face to hand referral is also seen after cortical deafferenta-

tion of the hand caused by stroke damaging the internal

capsule and thalamus (Turton and Butler, 2001). This implies

that remapping can occur in the cortex but it does not prove

that it cannot occur in the thalamus.

(vi) Very soon after arm amputation topographically organized

referral is seen from hand to hand in some patients

implicating plasticity of interhemispheric transcallosal con-

nections. Again, this requires cortical involvement—although

it does not rule out the possibility of additional thalamic

plasticity.

Figure 2 Topographic map of the hand onto the face (and

stump) (from Ramachandran and Hirstein, 1998).

Table 1 Remapping and cortical plasticity in humanamputees/phantom limbs and other conditions

Ramachandranet al. (1992)

Arm amputees touched on the face notesensation in amputated hand.

Yang et al. (1994) Magnetoencephalogram (MEG)demonstrates cortical remappingconsistent with clinical findings.

Aglioti et al.(1994)

Referred sensations from genital area toamputated leg.

Clarke et al.(1996)

Remapping of sensations of face referredto hand after trigeminal nerve resection.

Aglioti et al.(1997)

Referred sensation from face to anamputated index finger.

Kew et al. (1997) Positron emission tomography PET imagingindicates functional neurophysiologiccorrelates of cortical and clinicalremapping.

Turton and Butler(2001)

Referred sensations following stroke.

McCabe et al.(2003a)

Referred sensations in patients with CRPS.

Mirror visual feedback in restoring brain function Brain 2009: 132; 1693–1710 | 1695

(vii) With time there can be disorganization of previously

precisely topographically mapped referred sensations

(Halligan et al., 1994).

(viii) The number of sites from which phantom sensations—

especially pain—are referred correlates with the extent of

cortical reorganization (Knecht et al., 1996).

(ix) After damage to the acoustic nerve, some patients develop

a curious syndrome called gaze tinnitus; lateral eye gaze

causes them to hear a sound. Consistent with our remap-

ping hypothesis Cacace et al. (1994) suggested that

the deafferentation of the acoustic nerve nucleus causes

corticofugal fibers destined to the abducens nucleus

(involved in lateral gaze) to cross–innvervate the adjacent

auditory nucleus causing sounds to be heard every time a

lateral eye gaze command is sent.

(x) Referred sensations in limbs to areas adjacent on

the Penfield homunculus have been found in patients with

complex regional pain syndrome (McCabe et al., 2003a).

Phantom painApart from their intrinsic interest, phantom limbs are clinically

important because up to 50–80% of patients (Jensen and

Nikolajsen, 1999) suffer from often severe unremitting pain.

Many patients can move their phantoms but almost an equal

number claim that their phantom is immobile and paralysed,

often occupying a highly awkward position. The pain can last

for years and can either be continuous or intermittent, as when

the fingers go into a clenching spasm ‘with nails digging into the

palm.’ The patient is usually unable to unclench the fist or move

the hand volitionally to relieve the pain.

The origin of phantom pain is poorly understood and since it

has already been reviewed elsewhere (Ramachandran and

Hirstein, 1998) we will be brief. We can speculate that there are

at least five origins.

(i) Irritation of curled up nerve endings (neuromas) and scar

tissue in the amputation stump.

(ii) While central remapping (leading to referred sensations) is

usually topographically organized and modality specific, it is

pathological—almost by definition. Consequently some low

threshold touch input might cross-activate high threshold

pain neurons

(iii) The pathological ‘remapping’ can lead to a chaotic ‘junk’

output which, in itself, might be interpreted as both par-

esthesias and pain by higher brain centers. This is supported

by the observations of Flor and her colleagues (1995) who

found that the magnitude of phantom pain correlates with

degree of reorganization. See also MacIver et al. (2008).

(iv) The mismatch between motor commands and the

‘expected’ but missing visual and proprioceptive input may

be perceived as pain.

(v) The tendency for the pre-amputation pain whether brief

(e.g. a grenade blast, car accident) or chronic (cancer)

to persist as a ‘memory’ in the phantom.

Of these presumed causes (i)—neuromas—are probably the least

important even though they are the prime targets for surgeons.

On the other hand, the combined emergence of abnormal pat-

terns of impulses from (ii) and (iii) might lead to the excruciating

pain of phantoms.

Many patients with a phantom make the oxymoronic claim that

the phantom is paralysed—‘as if stuck in cement’ or ‘frozen in

a block of ice’. We noticed that these were often, though not

invariably, patients whose arm had been intact but actually

paralysed by peripheral nerve injury—such as a brachial

avulsion—for months prior to amputation. When the arm was

intact, every time a motor command was sent to the intact arm

the visual (and proprioceptive) signals came back informing the

brain that the arm was NOT moving. Perhaps this association

becomes ‘stamped’ in the brain as a form of ‘learned paraly-

sis’—which then carries over into the phantom. If this argument

is correct would it be possible to ‘unlearn’ the learned paralysis,

whether in phantom pain or paralysis from stroke? (Which may

also partially involve a form of learned paralysis; see below.)

The concept of ‘learned paralysis’ has also been applied by us to

partially account for the hemiparesis that follows stroke and we

demonstrated that MVF can accelerate recovery of limb function

in many patients (see below). This idea is different from the

important notion of learned ‘non-use’ proposed by Taub (1980)

for post-stroke paralysis, which simply involves postulating a long

period of non-use of the paralysed arm leading to reversible loss of

neural function. Taub’s model also differs from ours in that it does

not invoke visual feedback or mismatched signals. This makes our

therapeutic intervention (using ‘false’ visual feedback) radically

different from theirs (restricting the use of the good arm).

Taub’s technique (Wolf et al., 2006) involves the intact arm

being restrained and restricted from use by a mitt for at least

90% of a patient’s waking hours for a 2 week period. During

this time the patient tries to use the paralysed arm to the extent

possible with up to 6 h of practice a day, the movements being

partially guided by a therapist. (Whereas, in MVF studies patients

only used the mirror for about half an hour a day and, in some

studies was self–administered by the patient.) It is conceivable

if MVF is instituted for equivalently long periods the extent of

recovery would be even more complete than has been shown to

be the case so far. It may well turn out that different treatments—

or combinations of them in different ratios-are suitable for

different patients.

The observations on remapping suggest that connections in

the adult human brain are extraordinarily malleable, but can the

malleability be exploited clinically? This question set the stage for

our next set experiments which employed an optical trick to see if

visual feedback can modulate somatic sensations—including

pain—in the phantom.

One contributing factor in phantom pain, we have seen, might

be a mismatch between motor output and visual feedback from

the arm. But what if one were to restore the visual feedback in

response to the motor command? This would seem logically

impossible but one could conceivably use virtual reality—

monitoring motor commands to guide a virtual image of the

hand seen through goggles. But at that time virtual reality


technology was cumbersome, sluggish and expensive so we

decided to use a regular plane mirror.

Mirror therapyThe ‘mirror box’ consists of a 2�2 foot mirror vertically propped

up sagittally in the middle of a rectangular box (Fig. 3). The top

and front sides of the box are removed. The patient then places

(say) his paralysed left phantom on the left side of the mirror and

the intact normal hand on its right. He then looks into the (shiny)

right side of the mirror at the reflection of the intact right hand so

that its reflection seems visually superimposed on the felt location

of the phantom; thereby creating the illusion that the phantom

has been resurrected. While still looking into the mirror if he sends

motor commands to both hands to make symmetrical movements

such as conducting an orchestra or opening and closing the hand,

he gets the visual impression that his phantom hand is ‘obeying’

his command.

Our first patient was seen in 1993. He had a brachial avulsion in

1982, a year following which he had his left arm amputated above

his elbow. For the 11 years following the amputation he had a

vivid extended (i.e. not ‘telescoped’) phantom arm and hand that

were excruciatingly painful on an almost continuous basis. He

followed our instructions and remarked with considerable surprise

that he could not only see his phantom moving but also feel it

moving as well—for the first time in 11 years. Remarkably he also

noted that the pain was instantly reduced and that it felt good to

be able to control the phantom again. By having him repeat the

procedure several times with his eyes closed or open we verified

that the effect required visual feedback (Ramachandran et al.,

1995; Ramachandran and Hirstein, 1998; Ramachandran, 2005).

Prompted by these findings other groups have explored different

types of visual feedback (e.g. virtual reality technology, left/right

reversing prisms) and shown them to be at least partially effective

in ameliorating pain (see below.)

Would repeated practice with the mirror eventually lead to

a reversal of learned paralysis so that DS could voluntarily move

the phantom without the mirror? He took the box home and

continued the training sessions for 2 weeks; about 10 min each

day. He reported that during the 2 weeks each time he followed

the procedure the phantom moved temporarily and there was a

striking reduction of pain. Another week later he noted, with

surprise, that his phantom arm disappeared along with the pain

in the elbow and forearm. The phantom fingers, however, were

still present ‘dangling from the shoulder’ (i.e. telescoped) and they

were still painful. This ‘disappearance’ of the phantom or

its shrinkage probably results from the brain ‘gating’ conflicting

sensory inputs and has also been seen in other recent studies

(Flor et al., 2006) which have elegantly combined the use of

MVF with brain imaging studies. Similarly when a grotesquely

‘enlarged’ and painful phantom was viewed in a mirror box the

phantom shrank instantly for the first time in years with associated

‘shrinkage’ of pain (Gawande, 2008). Even the chronic itch in

the phantom vanished.

In the early days and weeks after amputation amputees often

report that the phantom hand goes into an extremely painful

clenching spasm; some of them feel their ‘nails digging into the

palm’. Such remarks are heard often enough—and independently

from different patients—that they are unlikely to be confabula-

tory. We all have clenched our fists one time or another and have

Hebbian memory associations between brain commands to clench

fists and the sense of nails digging into palms. But since the

receptors in our intact skin signal the absence of pain, we do

not literally feel pain when we simply retrieve our clenching–

fist (and associated nails–digging) memories. In the absence of

feedback from the missing arm, however, these pain memories

emerge to the surface of consciousness and are experienced

literally in the phantom (Ramachandran and Hirstein, 1998).

Furthermore, the absence of proprioceptive negative feedback

may lead to pathological ‘positive feedback’ amplification of the

motor commands which in turn may amplify associated Hebbian

links—including pain memories.

We tried the mirror procedure on an additional six patients who

had been amputated just a few weeks prior to our seeing them.

When they had a clenching spasm, the pain usually lasted for

several (e.g. 5–20) min. At the beginning of a spasm they

viewed the reflection of their clenched intact hand in the mirror

and sent motor commands to unclench both hands. In three of

them the procedure resulted in immediate relief from spasm

and associated pain, which was consistent across trials. Applying

a self-controlled shock from a TENS unit (placebo) during the pain

produced no pain reduction. The fact that a mere optical trick

could reduce pain instantly was of considerable theoretical interest

at the time when it was first reported.

Partly prompted by these studies, it was proposed by Harris

(2000) that phantom pain is—at least in part—a response to

the DISCREPANCY between different senses such as vision

and proprioception. If so, perhaps MVF acts by restoring the

congruence between motor output and sensory input.

Although Harris’ theory makes good phylogenetic sense one

potential objection might be that not EVERY discrepancy leads

to pain. For example, visual/vestibular discrepancy—as during

caloric nystagmus—can cause an aversive queasiness but

not pain. So discrepancy cannot be the sole reason for pain.Figure 3 The mirror box.


(This is to be expected of course; after all some pain is caused

simply by c-fiber activation.) But it may none the less be an

important contributing factor.

There is another way in which the mirror might act. Ordinarily

the patient feels intense pain in an arm he cannot see (his

phantom). Since nothing is seen or felt other than the pain,

there is nothing directly CONTRADICTING it. After all the visceral

pain of internal organs is only vaguely localizable, yet can be felt

intensely. (Of course, the patient recognizes at a higher intellectual

level that the pain cannot be real but that does not reduce the

pain; the pain mechanisms are partially immune from intellectual

correction.) When the patient looks at the visual reflection of the

real hand, however, he sees that there is no external object

CAUSING the pain in the optically resurrected phantom, so his

brain rejects the pain signal as spurious; it is a matter of how

different signals are weighted and integrated—or gate each

other—in the construction of body image and attribution of

pain. This hypothesis would predict that the mere act of seeing

the mirror image—even without seeing it move—might provide

partial relief. We have seen hints of this but not studied it

formally.

The striking beneficial effects of MVF on phantom pain has now

been confirmed in several studies (e.g. MacLachlan et al., 2004;

Chan et al., 2007; Sumitani et al., 2008; Darnall, 2009) (Table 2).

The most recent thorough demonstration was by Tsao and

colleagues (Chan et al., 2007) who tested MVF on 22 patients,

18 completing their study: six initially treated with mirror therapy,

six who were instructed to watch a covered mirror and six who

were trained in visual imagery. After 4 weeks, the mean

visual-analogue scale (VAS) pain rating fell from approximately

30/100 initially to 5/100 in the mirror therapy group, remained

at about 30/100 for the covered mirror group (P = 0.04 compared

with mirror therapy group), and actually rose from about 40/100

to 60/100 in the visual imagery group (P = 0.002 compared with

mirror therapy group). Nine subjects from the covered mirror and

visual imagery groups then crossed over to mirror therapy with a

mean 75% reduction in pain (P = .008 for VAS score after 4 weeks

on mirror therapy compared with prior 4 weeks on covered mirror

therapy or visual imagery). See Fig. 4.

The alleviation of phantom pain with MVF has also been studied

using brain imaging showing that the degree of phantom pain

correlates well with the degree of maladaptive reorganization

of somatosensory pathways (Flor et al., 1995), and that the

reorganization is partially reversed by MVF with corresponding

reduction of pain (Flor et al., 2006). This suggests that the

mirror might produce its effects at least partially by influencing

long-term cortical reorganization of brain maps.

Yet, this cannot be the sole mechanism because, as we have

seen, MVF sometimes acts virtually immediately—if only tempora-

rily—to eliminate pain as when the patient has a clenching spasm

and views the reflection of his normal hand opening and closing.

A similar modulation of pain is also seen when the patient merely

watches the experimenter massaging a third person’s intact hand

(see Mirror neurons and phantom limbs section). Such effects sug-

gest that, in addition to its long term benefits, visual feedback can

powerfully modulate current on-going pain in a limb.

Visual modulation of pain innormal individualsThe notion that powerful intersensory interactions can occur had

already been evident from the work of Gestalt psychologists from

the early 20th century. A particularly compelling example was

discovered by the pioneering experimental psychologist Rock

and Victor (1964). They found that vision dominates touch and

proprioception; if an object was made to merely LOOK large using

Table 2 Clinical studies of mirror therapy

Ramachandran et al. (1995) Series of cases of mirror therapy for phantom limb pain and immobility in upper limb amputees.

MacLachlan et al. (2004) Case study of mirror therapy for a lower limb amputee with phantom pain.

Chan et al. (2007) Randomized controlled trial of mirror therapy for phantom limb pain.

Sumitani et al. (2008) Series of cases examining the effect of mirror visual feedback on qualitative aspects of pain patientswith phantom limb pain after amputation, brachial plexus or other nerve injury.

Darnall (2009) Case study of mirror therapy for phantom limb pain.

Altschuler et al. (1999) Pilot study of mirror therapy for hemiparesis following stroke.

Sathian et al. (2000) Case study of mirror therapy in a patient with hemiparesis and sensory loss following stroke.

Stevens and Stoykov (2003) Two case studies of mirror therapy for patients with hemiparesis following stroke.

Stevens and Stoykov (2004) Case study of mirror therapy in hemiparesis following stroke.

Sutbeyaz et al. (2007) Randomized controlled trial of mirror therapy for lower extremity hemiparesis following stroke.

Yavuzer et al. (2008) Randomized controlled trial of mirror therapy for upper extremity hemiparesis following stroke.

McCabe et al. (2003b) Controlled pilot study of mirror therapy for CRPS.

Karmarkar and Lieberman (2006) Case study of mirror therapy for pain in CRPS.

Vladimir Tichelaar et al. (2007) Case studies of mirror therapy for CRPS.

Selles et al. (2008) Case studies of mirror therapy for CRPS.

Sumitani et al. (2008) Series of cases examining the effect of mirror visual feedback on qualitative aspects of pain patientswith phantom limb pain after amputation, brachial plexus or other nerve injury.

Rosen and Lundborg (2005) Mirror therapy for hand surgery patients with nerve injuries.

Altschuler and Hu (2008) Mirror therapy for patient after a wrist fracture with good passive, but no active range of motion.


a lens, while it was being palpated, it also FELT large. Rock coined

the phrase ‘visual capture’ to describe the phenomenon. Such

‘capture’ occurs when integrating information from different

senses because the brain assigns different weights to different

sensory inputs depending on their statistical reliability. Vision in

most cases dominates touch (Gibson, 1962).

Evidence of objective skin changes caused by a purely visual

input was provided by Armel and Ramachandran (2003) who

took advantage of a striking illusion originally discovered by

Botvinick and Cohen (1998). A rubber right hand is placed on

a table in front of a student. A partition separates the rubber

hand from her real right hand which is hidden from view, being

behind the partition. Her left hand is left dangling from her side.

As the subject intently watches the rubber hand the experimen-

ter—using his left hand—repeatedly taps, jabs and strokes it in

random sequence—and randomly chosen directions. He also

simultaneously uses his right hand to tap, jab and stroke her real

right hand—that is hidden from view—in perfect synchrony. After

several seconds, the subject remarks (often without prompting and

with considerable astonishment) that the tactile sensations

are being felt on the rubber hand instead of the hidden real

hand. This is because the brain—especially sensory systems—is

essentially a machine that has evolved to detect statistical correla-

tions in the world. ‘it’ says, in effect, ‘What’s the likelihood that

the exact sequence of strokes and taps is being simultaneously

seen on the dummy and FELT in the real hand?’ Zero.

Therefore, the sensations must be emerging from the dummy.

(The effect is not, in principle, different from ventriloquism

where the precise synchrony of the dummy’s lip movements and

the vocalizations of a real person (hidden from view at a distance)

are misattributed to the dummy.)

But can this perceptual misattribution of sensations to the

dummy hand actually lead to physiological changes? Armel and

Ramachandran (2003) measured the SCR (skin conductance

response; an objective index of limbic/autonomic arousal that

cannot be ‘faked’) to answer this question. They found that

when they suddenly hyperextended or viciously poked the

dummy hand after the subject had ‘identified’ with it, there was

a clearly measurable decrease in SCR in the real hand caused by

increased sweating resulting from autonomic arousal. Apparently

the dummy hand not only has sensations referred to it but also it

is now assimilated into the subject’s limbic system so a visually

perceived ‘pain’ in the dummy causes physiological changes in

the subject. This was the first demonstration that physical

changes—skin vascularization and sweating—can be modulated

by visual input delivered to an external object that is temporarily

incorporated into ones body image.

A number of other studies have also provided compelling

evidence of such interactions:

(i) McCabe et al. (2005) have shown, in normal subjects,

that if you view the reflection of your (say) right hand

superposed on the felt location of the hidden left hand,

then moving the right hand can result in the perception of

a tingling sensation, discomfort, and sometimes even pain,

in the left with the greatest sensory anomalies occurring

when the two hands moved asynchronously.

(ii) The fact that visual feedback can also modulate temper-

ature in a hand has recently been demonstrated in an

ingenious study by Moseley et al. (2008a) who also took

advantage of the rubber hand effect. After the subject

had started projecting the tactile sensations to the dummy

Figure 4 Beneficial effect of mirror therapy in phantom pain (from Chan et al., 2007).


(right) hand, the temperature of the real hand actually

became lower.

(iii) The important role of the convergence of different signals

on to a complex ‘neuromatrix’ in the construction of body

image has also long been emphasized by Melzack (1992).

(iv) Studies by Holmes, Spence and colleagues (Holmes and

Spence, 2005; Holmes et al., 2004, 2006) using MVF in

normal subjects have shown that seeing the reflection of

a limb can profoundly alter the sensed position and the

perceived location of other sensations in the contralateral

limb. Furthermore, we have noticed that optically induced

‘shrinking’ of the image of ones hand even leads to a curi-

ous alienation or disembodiment of the limb—as though it

does not belong to you (see Ramachandran and Altschuler

in Ramachandran and Rogers-Ramachandran, 2007). We

find the effect is especially pronounced when you see your

fingers wiggling because of the mismatch between motor

commands and extent of observed finger movements.

(v) Another remarkable observation deserves mention. Using an

optical system that uses a parasagittal mirror combined with

a minimizing lens we created the visual impression In a

patient that his painful phantom arm had shrunk. This

caused an immediate shrinkage of pain from 8 to 2.

No increase in pain was seen with a magnifying lens,

strongly suggesting that these are not merely the effect of

suggestion. It was as though the felt size was ‘captured’ by

visual size and this in turn caused the pain to shrink as well.

On the face of it this seems absurd but if proprioception

(conveying felt size through muscle spindles and tendons) can

be captured by visual size—as originally shown by Rock in

normal people—then why is it any more surprising that pain

should be captured as well? Here, then, is yet another example

of a rather esoteric visual phenomenon (visual capture) being used

to reduce pain in a clinical context.

A similar observation was made by Gawande (2008). He

describes a patient who had a phantom arm that was painfully

‘swollen’—being felt as much larger than a normal arm. When the

patient looked at the reflection of his normal hand superposed

optically (using the mirror) on his phantom, the phantom shrank

instantly and the pain and itch shrank correspondingly. No lens

was required because the phantom itself was ‘swollen.’

(vi) We have used (Altschuler and Ramachandran, 2007) two

very large standing mirrors facing each other to create a

discrepancy between vision and proprioception of the

whole body. This creates the feeling that one is standing

outside oneself. Two other groups have found similar effects

using virtual reality set ups (Ehrsson, 2007; Lenggenhager

et al., 2007). Effects are variable and seen in about three

out of four subjects.

Taken collectively, these findings add to the growing body of

evidence that the senses interact much more powerfully than

anyone imagined and that visual input, whether conveyed through

the use of mirrors or dummy hands, can be used to modulate

somatic pain.

Mirror therapy in strokerehabilitationThe paralysis that follows stroke is thought to result mainly

from ‘irreversible’ damage to the internal capsule. It is possible,

however, that during the first few days or weeks there is swelling

and edema of white matter that results in a temporary interruption

of corticofugal signals, leaving behind a form of learned paralysis

even after the swelling and edema subsides. This might be

analogous to the ‘learned paralysis’ that is seen in phantom

limbs. Based on this reasoning, we suggested that MVF might

accelerate recovery from hemiparesis following stroke

(Ramachandran, 1994).

We conducted a placebo-controlled pilot study (Altschuler et al.,

1999) along these lines in nine patients. Moderate recovery of func-

tion was seen in three patients, mild in three, and almost none in

three. Based on these preliminary findings, we suggested that MVF

may provide a useful adjunct therapy for paralysis from stroke.

Subsequently, a number of case reports and series (Sathian

et al., 2000; Stevens and Stoykov, 2003, 2004) found benefit of

mirror therapy in hemiparesis following stroke. Recently, two

randomized-controlled trials of mirror therapy have found signifi-

cant improvement from hemiparesis: A study of 40 patients with

lower extremity hemiparesis (Sutbeyaz et al., 2007) were enrolled

up to 12 months post-stroke. They were randomly assigned to

mirror therapy or a control therapy in which they moved both

legs with the legs separated by an opaque partition. All subjects

also received conventional physical therapy. Subjects in the mirror

therapy group showed statistically significant improvement in

Brunnstrom stages and FIM motor scores compared with subjects

in the control group. No significant difference was found in the

modified Ashworsh scale or the functional ambulation categories.

However, this was a study that trained subjects only on

movements at single joints, not ambulation. In a subsequent

study 40 patients with upper extremity hemiparesis (Yavuzer

et al., 2008) up to 12 months post-stroke were randomly assigned

to mirror therapy or a sham therapy moving both hands and arms

but with an opaque partition between the arms. All subjects also

received conventional physical therapy. The subjects in the mirror

therapy group showed statistically significant improvement in

Brunnstrom stage and FIM self-care score over subjects in the

control group (Fig. 5).

Another recent randomized, controlled, cross-over study

(Matsuo et al., 2008) of 15 sub-acute patients with hemiparesis

following stroke found mirror therapy superior to control treat-

ment, the outcome measure being the Fugel–Meyer assessment

scale of the paretic arm.

These results indicate that many patients show substantial

recovery of function using MVF. But the variability suggests that

the procedure may help some patients more than others. This

variability may depend in part on the exact location of

the lesion and duration of paralysis following stroke. Once these

variables have been understood, it might be possible to administer

MVF to those patients who are likely to benefit most. (Although,

given the simplicity of the procedure, there is no reason why it

should not be implemented routinely as adjuvant therapy.)


Figure 5 (A) Functional independence measure (FIM) self-care score (adapted from Yavuzer et al., 2008). (B) Brunnstrom stage

(upper extremity). (C) Brunnstrom stage (hand).


In addition to these blind placebo-controlled studies there

have been a number of clinical case studies reporting striking

recovery from stroke (Sathian et al., 2000) from phantom pain

(MacLachlan et al., 2004) and from reflex sympathetic dystrophy

(RSD) (Karmarkar and Lieberman, 2006; Vladimir Tichelaar et al.,

2007; Selles et al., 2008). The results of these studies strongly

support the idea that visual feedback can modulate pain and

even reverse more objective signs such as inflammation and

paralysis. These studies complement the results of more controlled

trials. They are, in some ways, just as significant because each

such patient serves as his own control, having gone through

intense regimens of conventional rehab, ‘alternative medicine,’

drugs such as morphine and even drastic surgical procedures to

no avail. (So there is a sense in which the placebo ‘controls’ for

these patients was all the other neurorehabilitation they have been

through.) It is also noteworthy that some of the studies

also included measurements of physical changes such as skin

temperature that would be impossible to confabulate. Especially

important, in this regard, is the McCabe et al. study conducted in

collaboration with Patrick Wall (Mc Cabe et al., 2003b; see below)

showing change in the skin temperature of the dystrophic arm

produced by MVF over the course of the 6 week study period.

Neural mechanism of MVFWe have already discussed the manner in which restoring congru-

ence between vision and motor output can lead to an unlearning

of learned paralysis in stroke patients.

Another explanation can also be invoked that takes advantage

of the discovery of mirror neurons by Rizzolatti and his colleagues

in the early 1990s (di Pellegrino et al., 1992).

Such neurons are found in the frontal lobes as well as the

parietal lobes. These areas are rich in motor command neurons

each of which fires to orchestrate a sequence of muscle twitches

to produce simple skilled movement such as (if you are a monkey)

reaching for a peanut or pushing a stone or putting an apple in

your mouth. Remarkably, a subset of these neurons—‘mirror

neurons’—also fire when the monkey (or person) merely

WATCHES another individual perform the same movement.

They allow you to ‘put yourself’ in the other’s shoes—viewing

the world from the other’s perspective—(not just physical but

mental perspective)—in order to infer his IMPENDING action.

Mirror neurons necessarily involve interactions between multiple

modalities—vision, motor commands, proprioception—which sug-

gest that they might be involved in the efficacy of MVF in stroke.

Stroke paralysis results partly from actual ‘permanent’ damage to

the internal capsule but also—as we have seen—from a form of

‘learned’ paralysis that can be potentially unlearned using a

mirror. An additional possibility is that lesion is not always complete;

there may be a residue of mirror neurons that have survived but

are ‘dormant’ or whose activity is inhibited and does not reach

threshold. (And, indeed, motor areas may have become temporarily

inactive as a result of the same mechanism as learned paralysis—a

failure of visual feedback to close the loop.) If so one could postulate

that MVF might owe part of its efficacy to stimulating these

neurons, thus providing the visual input to revive ‘motor’ neurons.

This hypothesis also receives confirmation from Buccino and

colleagues (Ertelt et al., 2007) who followed up our work on

stroke recovery using MVF, except they had patients watch

videos of movements performed by healthy individuals presented

via a screen in frontal view, and then have the subjects try to use

their paretic arm to make similar movements. This method of

therapy was found in a small trial to be superior to a control

group of subjects who received conventional physical therapy

and watched videos of geometric symbols. Many groups have

also employed virtual reality technology to create the visual feed-

back—instead of using mirrors (see, e.g. Eng et al., 2007).

However, there have not been large clinical studies of virtual

reality. Such procedures have the potential advantage that they

can be used for BILATERAL stroke patients or amputees for whom

the mirror would be useless (though a patient with a bilateral

amputation or with bilateral hemiparesis following stroke(s)

could move one arm while watching the reflection of the arm of

a therapist or family member in the mirror). Also, studies using

virtual reality observation of playback of the mirror reflection of

the good arm or leg recorded offline could help in parsing out

contribution of movement of the contralateral limb. But virtual

reality systems have the disadvantage of currently being very

expensive and therefore not amenable to self-administration at

home. In addition, it is still not clear, and worthy of future

study, the extent to which the realistic image provided by a

mirror needs to be replicated by virtual reality technology, and

also the ability of a virtual reality system to mimic the relative

speeds of movement of the normal and the affected limb implicitly

generated by a subject using a mirror.

Recruitment of ipsilateral pathwaysusing mirrorsIn addition to the corticospinal tracts that project contralaterally

from motor cortex there are some ipsilateral projections. For

instance, the right motor cortex sends its efferents not only to

the left side of the spinal cord as most medical students are

taught but also to the IPSILATERAL spinal cord. Five questions

arise: Are these pathways excitatory or inhibitory? Are they

functional or vestigial remnants of an ancient uncrossed pathway?

When commands are sent to the contralateral body side why do

not any commands go simultaneously to the ipsilateral muscles so

you get irrepressible ipsilateral movements ‘mirroring’ those in the

left? And last, if the right hemisphere output to the left side of the

spinal cord and body is damaged by stroke then why cannot

the IPSILATERAL projection from the left hemisphere to the left

spinal cord ‘take over’ and move the ‘paralysed’ limb?

None of these questions has been answered to satisfaction

but clearly a more thorough investigation may allow us to take

advantage of these connections in a clinical setting. Perhaps visual

feedback acts, in part, by reviving these dormant ipsilateral con-

nections. Indeed, Davare et al. (2007), and Schwerin et al. (2008)

have shown using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) that

ipsilateral projections have a non-trivial role even in normal

subjects. It might be interesting to see if the degree to which


ipsilateral activation (through TMS) occurs varies with the degree

of recovery using MVF.

Mirror neurons and phantom limbsJust as mirror neurons exist for motor commands there are ‘pain’

mirror neurons in the anterior cingulate that fire when you are

hurt with a needle or when you merely watch someone else being

hurt. One wonders whether such neurons are involved in such

phenomena as ‘empathy’.

Touch receptors from your skin send signals which—after relay

in the thalamus (a fist-sized structure in the center of the brain)—

project to somatosensory cortex (S1) and eventually to the

superior parietal lobule where different signals are combined.

This generates your sense of a coherent body image that endures

through time and space. Intriguingly, many of these—the ‘touch

mirror neurons’—fire not only when you are being touched but

also when you watch someone being touched (Keysers C et al.,

2004). But if so, how do they know the difference? Why do you

not literally feel touch sensations when merely watching someone

being touched, given that your mirror neurons are firing away?

One answer might be that when you watch someone touched,

even though your ‘touch mirror neurons’ are activated the

receptors in your skin are NOT stimulated and this LACK of

activity (the ‘null signal’) informs your regular garden variety

touch neurons (i.e. non-mirror touch neurons) that your hand is

NOT being touched. They in turn partially veto the output of

mirror touch neurons at some later stage so you do not actually

experience touch sensations; you merely empathize. We empha-

size that the output from intact (non-touched) skin would only

inhibit ONE of the outputs of the mirror neuron system—the

one which leads to conscious appreciation of touch quale. If

it inhibited the mirror neurons themselves it would defeat the

purpose of having mirror neurons in the first place.

To test these ideas, we (Ramachandran and Rogers-

Ramachandran, 2008) asked a patient with a phantom arm to

simply watch a student being touched on her arm. As we briefly

noted earlier, the patient volunteered that he could actually FEEL

the touch signals on corresponding locations in his phantom and

he seemed amazed by this. The amputation had removed

null signal from the skin causing his mirror neuron output to be

experienced directly as conscious touch sensations. Indeed

massaging the student’s arm produced pain relief in his phantom.

These effects—feeling touch stimuli delivered to another

person—were replicated in three patients. The effect is unlikely

to be confabulatory—for four reasons: first, no sensations were

ever felt in the non-amputated intact arm. Second, the patients

expressed considerable surprise. Third, there was a latency of

several seconds before the effect emerges and one would

not expect a long latency for confabulation. (The latency was

consistently seen across all three subjects.) Fourth, when the

patient watched the student being stroked with a piece of ice,

the touch alone was referred for the first half a minute or so

followed by referral of cold. (The cold referral was noted only

by one of the three patients.) This uncoupling of modalities

would also not be expected if confabulation or response bias

were involved. We would suggest that the longer latency

(or indeed, failure) of temperature referral is because the

Hebbian links for associating ice with cold is not as strong as

between vision and touch—the latter association having been

seen much more often. (Or one could say there are fewer

‘mirror neurons’ for temperature than for touch.)

The reduction of pain through watching the student being

massaged, however, was demonstrated only in one subject—so

this needs confirmation in a formal placebo-controlled study.

In one experiment we had the patient watch a student suddenly

prick his own intact palm with a sharp needle and pretend to

wince in pain. The patient shouted in pain, and reflexively

‘pulled’ his phantom away claiming he had felt a nasty twinge

of pain. He was quite astonished by this as were several residents

who were watching the procedure.

The important lesson is that feeling ‘touch’ or ‘pain’ involves far

more than sensing the activation of touch or pain receptors from

your hand; it results from complex neural networks from different

sense modalities interacting with each other and—indeed—with

other brains! The properties of these intricate, yet decipherable,

networks can be studied by experimenting on neurological

patients and can be exploited clinically for reducing pain.

Functional imaging and TMS withmirrorsFunctional imaging studies of patients who have had mirror

therapy are still on-going (see, e.g. www.clinicaltrials.gov

NCT00662415).

We have already mentioned Flor’s imaging studies demon-

strating the striking effects of MVF and correlating the degree

of reorganization with the degree of pain reduction. Space

limitations do not allow us to review all experiments in the fields

but two others deserve special mention.

In an interesting study in normal subjects Garry et al. (2005)

used TMS to look at excitability of the motor cortex ipsilateral to a

moving hand. They studied four conditions: (i) subjects watching

the hand they were moving; (ii) subjects watching their inactive

hand; (iii) subjects watching a marked position between the

moving and inactive hand; and (iv) subjects watching the

reflection of the moving hand in a plane reflecting mirror. They

found a significant increase in motor cortex excitability in

the mirror viewing condition compared with the other conditions

consistent with the mirror reflection exciting the motor cortex

corresponding to the reflection of the moving hand.

A somewhat different experiment to explore the effects of MVF

was conducted on normal subjects by Frackowiak and colleagues

(Fink et al., 1999) using PET imaging. They had subjects looking

into the mirror box while performing symmetric motions of the

two arms (condition 1; the concordant condition) or DISSIMILAR

movements so that the visual reflections contradicted both

proprioception and motor commands (condition 2; discordant con-

dition). The prefrontal and motor cortex lit up in both hemispheres

in the concordant condition but the main effect of the discordant

condition was greater activity in the right dorsolateral prefrontal

cortex. This observation points to hemisphere asymmetries during

MVF and may have implications for treatment.


Complex regional painsyndrome—previouslyknown as reflex sympatheticdystrophyAnother enigmatic pain syndrome that has long been considered

intractable is complex regional pain syndrome (CPRS). The

syndrome was first described by the Philadelphia physician

Mitchell who described phantom limbs (Mitchell, 1864, 1872),

who, incidentally, was also the first to describe pseudocyesis or

phantom pregnancy. Also, most interestingly, Mitchell’s father, the

physician John Kearsley Mitchell (1798–1858) was the first to

describe (1831) the denervation-induced destruction of joints in

patients who had spinal cord damage secondary to tuberculosis.

(This condition is known today as a ‘Charcot joint.’ Charcot (1868)

described a similar conditions in patients with tertiary syphilis.) The

role of the nervous system in musculoskeletal pathology may have

been a frequent topic of dinner conversation at the Mitchell

household.

The hallmark of the disorder (CRPS) is the persistence—indeed

progressive increase—in pain, swelling and inflammation in a limb

long after the inciting injury has gone, despite the trivial nature of

the original injury and despite the absence of any current infection

or tissue damage.

For example, the patient may initially have had a hairline frac-

ture of a metacarpal or even a sprain with accompanying swelling,

pain and temperature changes, Ordinarily these changes would

subside and disappear altogether as soon as the metacarpal

fracture has healed, say in a few weeks (or longer if extensive

orthopaedic or neurosurgical operations were necessary). But in

a minority of patients the pain and inflammation persist with a

vengeance for years—long after the original inciting injury has

gone. This usually results in an immobilization or paralysis of the

limb partly because any attempt to move it causes excruciating

pain. Even light touch applied to the limb is felt as unbearable pain

(dysesthesia) and, most remarkably, there is actual atrophy of

bone possibly from disuse and ‘top down’ trophic effects

(Sudek’s atrophy). CRPS therefore provides a valuable probe for

exploring mind–body interactions.

An evolutionary approach to CRPS may help us better under-

stand the disorder and lead to novel treatments. The word ‘pain’

encompasses at least two very different categories—acute and

chronic—which, in our view, may have fundamentally different

evolutionary origins and functional consequences. The first—as

happens when you touch a hot plate—results in movement or

MOBILIZATION of the limb away from the source of pain to

avoid injury. The latter results in IMMOBILIZATION of the limb

to protect it from further injury (e.g. as in a fracture). Of course

this immobilization usually gets reversed when the chronic inflam-

mation/infection subsides but if the mechanism goes awry you get

stuck with the painful immobilization. In particular, during the

original inflammation, any ATTEMPT to move the arm would

cause severe pain so that in time the corollary discharge from

these very attempts get linked in a Hebbian manner to the pain.

Subsequently, every signal that gets sent even ‘accidentally’ to the

limb evokes and amplifies the associated memories even though

the inflammation itself is no longer there—a phenomenon we

have dubbed ‘learned pain’. Based on this reasoning we suggested

the use of MVF to convey the visual illusion to the patient that

his ‘painful’ arm was moving (painlessly) in response to motor

commands thereby resulting in an ‘unlearning’ of the learned

pain and learned immobilization.

Studies of mirror therapy in CRPSA number of small studies and case reports have found mirror

therapy of benefit in patients with complex regional pain

syndrome/reflex sympathetic dystrophy (McCabe et al., 2003b;

Karmarkar and Lieberman, 2006; Vladimir Tichelaar et al., 2007;

Selles et al., 2008).

The most convincing of these is a placebo-covered mirror-

controlled study by McCabe et al. (2003b). Significantly, patients

with recent (8 weeks or less) onset of CRPS showed significant

benefit from mirror therapy—but not from control therapies—

while subjects with chronic CRPS (one year or greater) did not

show benefit from mirror therapy.

As noted earlier, a surprising aspect of the McCabe study was

that they demonstrated that the perceived pain reduction from the

visual feedback actually caused changes in objectively measured

skin temperature in the affected limb. Such temperature changes

cannot be ‘faked’ and is, as far as we know, the first evidence

that objectively measurable physiological changes in a limb can be

caused by visual feedback.

If the experiments of McCabe et al. and the cases described in

Gawande hold up, they would have tremendous impact on the

way we think about central pain and mind–body interactions;

elevating such phenomena from the obfuscations of ‘alternative

medicine’ to the realm of empirical science.

MVF-aided visual imageryand phantom painThanks in part to the AI movement in vision it used to be

thought all sensory processing happens in a hierarchic manner

with early sensory modules computing more primitive stimulus

features such as (in the case of vision) colour, motion, orientation

of edges, motion direction, etc, and (in the case of somatic sensa-

tions, touch, pain, temperature pressure, etc.) and delivering the

results of these computations through successive stages to higher

levels of processing. This has been caricatured by us as the ‘serial

hierarchical bucket-brigade—model of perception’ (Churchland

et al., 1994). It has long been known, however, that there are

as many feedback projections going from level to level DOWN the

hierarchy as up. It is possible that these reverse pathways are

somehow involved in phenomena such as the visual imagery we

can all engage in even without an external stimulus. The memories

of (say) a previously seen image of a rose are sent back to


reactivate early sensory levels. This ensures that what you have is

not merely an abstract conception of a rose stored as neural

equations but ‘real’ visual rose full of tactile, olfactory and visual

qualia; a ‘sensory’ representation of the rose that you can use as

an explicit token for language and other forthcoming behavioural

rehearsals. Indeed, consistent with non-hierarchic sensory proces-

sing, a recent study (Valentini et al., 2008) in stroke patients

with hemihypaesthesia found that in group measures sensation

detection, localization and intensity detection was superior

with touch by a patient’s unaffected hand compared with an

examiner’s hand.

Indeed there is a wealth of experimental evidence that when

you imagine something, partial activation of the very same neural

pathways occurs as would be evoked by a real external stimulus;

as if your brain is doing a virtual reality simulation (Kosslyn et al.,

1983). So when you visualize your arm moving (whether it is

a normal intact arm, a paralysed one or even just a phantom)

then some of the same neural circuits would be activated as

are activated by a mirror.

If this line of reasoning is correct then one should be able to use

intense—and highly rehearsed—visual imagery to pretend that the

painful phantom—or paralysed arm (in CRPS/RSD or stroke) is

moving and that, in turn, should help relieve pain and/or paralysis

(the only limit being how powerful the patients imagery is and to

what extent it stimulates populations of neurons that are ordinarily

activated by a direct visual stimulus). Stimulated by our work with

mirrors three other groups have tried visual imagery in combina-

tion with MVF. Oakley et al. (2002) found hypnotically induced

imagery of MVF beneficial for phantom limb pain. Moseley (2006)

found that beginning subjects with limb laterality training, next

imagined movements, then MVF was beneficial in terms of

decreasing pain in patients with phantom pain or pain from

CRPS. Another study also demonstrated that ‘motor imagery/

visualization training’ and MVF are both more effective than con-

ventional rehab in patients with phantom pain (MacIver et al.,

2008). These studies suggests that ‘virtual’ visual feedback

conveyed through imagery may partially mimic the effects of

real visual feedback conveyed through mirrors or virtual reality

(presumably by recruiting and exploiting the same neural

mechanisms).

As previously noted, Tsao and colleagues (Chan et al., 2007)

directly compared eight phantom limb patients using imagery

(which they used as a placebo) with eight receiving MVF

and found that while all patients in the latter group showed a

striking reduction in phantom pain within 2 weeks, the imagery

group did not (see Phantom limbs section); indeed there was

a slight increase in pain. Even more convincingly, when the

visual imagery group was crossed over to the mirror they

showed the same pain decrement from about 8 (on a scale

of 10) to about 2 or 3.

Taken collectively, these studies confirm the important role of

visual feedback in neuro-rehabilitation—whether conveyed

through mirrors, lenses, visualization training assisted by MVF or

by virtual reality technology. What combination of these treat-

ments works best for different patients remains to be explored.

Use of mirrors in rehabilitationfrom hand surgeryRosen and Lundborg (2005) recently described three patients who

benefited from mirror therapy. The first patient had poor active

flexion of the hand after irrigation and debridement of an infected

cat bite. The second had rheumatoid arthritis and had had multiple

tendon transfers. Both failed initial traditional hand therapy. After

initiating mirror therapy—flexing fingers on both hands, the

affected hand as much as possible, while watching the reflection

of the good (non-injured) hand—both patients improved consid-

erably in both active range of motion and strength. The patient

touched stationary and moving objects with both hands while

watching the reflection of the good hand in a parasaggital

mirror. Vision of the reflection of the good hand allowed the

patient to actually begin touching objects with the affected

hand. Training was also apparently able to override the aberrant

sensory input from the injured hand to the point where the

paraesthesias subsided and were no longer either disabling or

troubling.

We have recently observed similar effects of mirror therapy

on one patient (Altschuler and Hu, 2008) who had sustained a

fracture in February of 2006, in her left distal radius with no

tendon or neurovascular involvement. She was treated with

closed reduction and casting, but after 2 months needed open

reduction with internal fixation and bone graft for non-union of

the fracture. Once the final cast was removed in May, 2006 she

presented with severe stiffness and pain in the wrist; her active

and passive wrist extension and supination were zero degrees.

This could have been a form of ‘learned paralysis.’ Despite being

right-handed, she said that inability to use her left arm had greatly

hindered her ability to take care of her house and children. After

about a week of ‘conventional’ treatment, passive extension had

increased to 20�, but she was unable to actively extend the wrist

at all. To facilitate active wrist extension, neuromuscular electrical

stimulation was begun on her wrist extensors. After about 1 week,

the patient was able to extend the wrist actively during electrical

stimulation, but not afterwards. We started her on MVF in

early June, 2006. She had 15 min of mirror therapy with electrical

stimulation simultaneously applied to the wrist extensors two to

three times each week as an outpatient. She also began a home

program of mirror therapy—15 min twice daily (of course without

stimulation). Her active wrist extension increased to 25� by early

July, 2006. She continued mirror therapy until mid-July (a total of

5 weeks), by which time her wrist extension was 30� actively.

She was discharged from treatment in mid-August with active

wrist extension of 35� and supination of 80�. She was pleased

with this physiologic outcome and reported an essentially normal

ability to do all activities of home and childcare.

Four other clinical cases observed by us informally deserve

mention:

(i) The first patient had a trigger finger. She felt that opening

and closing both fists, while watching the reflection of the hand

without the trigger finger produced improved movements in


the trigger finger. This anecdotal observation might be worth

following up;

(ii) The second patient (K.S.) had focal dystonia (writers cramp) in

his right hand, which had started four years prior to our seeing

him. He was keen on trying to use the mirror, having seen reports

of it in the media. We tried coaching on this and had him come to

our facility three 1-h sessions a week for 2 months. The MVF had

no effect whatsoever. But this should not discourage other

researchers from trying the treatment since the outcome may

depend on the duration for which the focal dystonia had been

present prior to treatment;

(iii) The third patient had—judging from her history—a form

of Jacksonian seizures that started in her hand, progressing

proximally to the upper arm and eventually involving the trunk

(although it did not culminate in grand mal). Since no formal

clinical evaluations were done we have to bear in mind the

possibility that her condition was purely ‘psychogenic’ in origin.

Whatever the pathogenesis, she was able to use MVF. When the

tremors/seizures began in her left arm she looked at the reflection

of her normal hand to convey the illusion that the affected

arm was still. This seemed to instantly abolish the seizure. The

observation reminded us of the ‘trick’ invented in the early days

of neurology using powerful smells to ‘mask’ the hallucinatory

smell auras that precede TLE seizures, thereby aborting the

seizure; and

(iv) Even more surprisingly, we recently encountered a patient

who could treat the intense left hemi-facial pain of trigeminal

neuralgia using MVF (http://anadmiracle.blogspot.com/). He had

been suffering from the disorder for nearly 12 years and had gone

through several conventional treatments which proved to be

completely ineffective (as is often the case). He opted not to

have invasive neurosurgery and, following a suggestion from

one of us (VSR), looked at his face in a double reflecting mirror.

Unlike a normal mirror a double–reflecting mirror (two mirrors

taped at right angles) does NOT optically reverse your face. So,

if you look in the mirror and someone touches the actual RIGHT

side of your face it creates the illusion that the LEFT side of your

face is being touched (because the normal ‘expected’ reversal does

not occur). The patient made ingenious use of the technique.

Obviously he could not massage the left side of the face; the

very attempt to get close to it or actually touching it lightly pro-

voked excruciating pain. Presumably years of Hebbian association

had established a link between the REAL pain and light touch

(as well as vision). He looked in the mirror and watched his

wife’s hand massaging his right face so he SAW his left (painful)

side being ‘massaged’ without provoking pain; progressively so

that the ‘learned pain’ could be unlearned. Astonishingly the

pain dropped from about 6 down to 0 after 10 min and with

repeated 10 min treatments stayed at zero for months. Massage

applied to the right face WITHOUT looking in a mirror was com-

pletely ineffective. It would be premature to regard this as some

kind of ‘miracle cure’ (the phrase used by the patient) for trigem-

inal neuralgia, but it is worth noting that the procedure had essen-

tially changed his life. This was tremendously satisfying, especially

coming in the wake of 12 years of ineffective conventional treat-

ments. The pain of tic douloureux is usually considered intractable.

It is noteworthy that in this case the reduction of pain was seen

after the very first trial—within 10 min (although periodic ‘topping

up’ was needed to keep the pain down at zero). The implication is

that in addition to its long-term beneficial effects, acting through

reversing cortical reorganization, visual feedback can act immedi-

ately to modulate pain (as we already noted in the case of

phantom pain and CRPS/RSD).

A note of caution is in order: Even though the complete cure of

patient’s pain was inspired by our earlier studies using MVF, and

the patient’s name for his blog notwithstanding, it is far from

proven that the procedure worked in him as a RESULT of MVF.

Given the well known trans–callosal connections between the two

sides of the face, it would be interesting to see if—in other

patients—repeated massage on the contralateral face region

might on its own (without visual feedback) be partially effective

in reducing pain. This seems unlikely since the patient we

described above had tried massage (without MVF) but a more

systematic study would be worthwhile since simple massage

would be even easier to administer than MVF!

Needless to say all five examples discussed above are single case

studies and any conclusions from them must be regarded as highly

tentative and unproven. But they do suggest that additional

placebo-controlled studies on such syndromes might be fruitful.

It is worth noting though that most conventional procedures

have proved to be notoriously ineffective in treating these

disorders and, in a sense, the patient ‘is his own control’ having

gone through several conventional treatments with an intense

desire and expectation they would work. Yet they were ineffective

whereas visual feedback was. It seems highly improbable that

a patient with trigeminal neuralgia should have tried 10 years of

other treatments without benefit (even though he had fully

hoped/expected them to work) whereas MVF should result in

a rapid pain reduction merely as a result of wishful thinking.

Yet, improbable does not mean impossible which is why additional

clinical trials are needed.

Our observations on MVF as well as those of others also

suggest a novel, potentially effective treatment of Parkinson’s

disease. Since the disorder usually begins unilaterally, one wonders

if MVF administered early on might delay the further progression

of the disease indefinitely. We are currently exploring this

approach.

Potential use of theMVF principle for otherneuropsychiatry syndromesWe have so far discussed the manner in which ‘false’ visual feed-

back (with mirrors) can promote recovery from stroke, phantom

pain and the pain of RSD. Could the same ‘false feedback’

strategy be applied to other syndromes such as ‘emotional pain’?

A good test case would be panic attacks.

The cause of panic attacks is unknown. One possibility is that it

occurs because of a ‘mini’ seizure episode in the temporal lobes

that falsely triggers a fight or flight response accompanied

by sympathetic outflow. Ordinarily this outflow—along with the


http://anadmiracle.blogspot.com/

corresponding affective and behavioural propensities (‘anger,’

‘fear,’ etc.)—is caused by a clearly visible external threat. The

ensuing consummation of the act appropriate to the threat leads

to catharsis of emotion (fighting = relief from anger) and reduction

of threat. But if the autonomic outflow and sense of danger—

which would include the sensing of feedback from your own

heartbeat—occurs WITHOUT any visible external threat, then

you would not know what target to attribute the emotion to.

You may then turn the danger ‘inward’ and experience a vague,

yet terrifying, sense of impending doom; a panic attack. In the

absence of a tangible external threat you would not know how

to best to express your response and consequently there is no

feedback reduction of the perceived threat.

In short the brain has no way of dealing with a

NON-ATTRIBUTABLE yet intense emotion and autonomic storm

and the net result is a disabling panic attack

If so could a panic attack be aborted by false feedback

analogous that provided by MVF? Most patients experience a

vague premonition of an impending attack up to a minute

before it actually kicks in. One could conceivably have the patient

carry around an iPhone with terrifying horror scenes. He/she could

then look at the video as soon as he could sense the attack

coming on. Given that his brain can now attribute the fight/

flight response to a tangible external threat, perhaps the attack

will be aborted. The fact that he ‘knows’ at an intellectual level

that it is only a movie may not matter; just as knowing that MVF

is not ‘real’ does not affect its efficacy. (Nor does knowing that

a horror movie is not real diminish the horror.)

We mention this example only to illustrate that the basic

principle of providing a ‘false’ or substitute feedback, may have

implications for neuropsychiatric rehab that extend far beyond its

use in stroke, phantom pain and RSD.

Reversibility of neurologicaldisordersThe findings reviewed in this article should not be overstated to

imply that there are no hardwired specialized modules in the brain,

an absurd claim that would contradict over a century of neurol-

ogy. Nonetheless they suggest a degree of flexibility that would

not have previously been suspected.

By hindsight this is not as radical a doctrine as it might seem at

first. Every medical student is taught that the cognitive deficits

seen after brain injury are—to a large extent—permanent. Yet

we have also long known that there are some syndromes—even

profoundly disabling ones—from which the majority of patients

recover completely in a matter of weeks or even days. Good

examples would be hemineglect and anosognosia (denial of

paralysis) following a right parietal stroke. Does not the striking

recovery seen in patients with neglect provide an ‘existence proof’

that recovery is possible even from profound dysfunction?

Or take a syndrome as well known as Wernicke’s aphasia. The

patient who, purportedly, has dysfunction confined entirely to the

Wernicke’s area in the left hemisphere, has almost no compre-

hension of even simple words presented visually or verbally.

The standard explanation for this is that the equivalent region in

the right hemisphere has no semantics; it cannot understand word

meanings.

But contrast this with what happens after commissurotomy.

When words are presented selectively to the right hemisphere

they are fully understood even if the word cannot be read out

loud. Even simple sentences are understood so long as there is no

elaborate hierarchical ‘nesting’ of clause within clause. This implies

that in the normal brain the right hemisphere is indeed capable of

semantic comprehension. The reason it cannot function in a

Wernicke’s patient may be because the lesion in the Wernicke’s

area produces—via the corpus callosum—some ‘sympathetic’ mal-

function in the mirror symmetric location in the right hemisphere,

a possibility that can be tested using functional brain imaging.

It is as though the malfunctioning Wernicke’s area in the left

hemisphere inserts a ‘software bug’ in the equivalent area in the

right hemisphere.

Such effects may also occur in Broca’s aphasia, as has been shown

in an ingenious experiment performed by Pasqua-Leone and collea-

gues (Naeser et al. 2005). In a small open study they silenced the

right hemisphere using TMS and found substantial improvement

of in picture naming suggesting that the right hemisphere

was inhibiting the malfunctioning Broca’s area (the evolutionary

rationale being, better a silent module than a dysfunctional one).

More directly relevant is a recent study conducted by

Ramachandran et al. (2007) on intense chronic pain caused by a

small stroke in the thalamus (Dejerine-Roussy syndrome). They

found that simply irrigating the right ear with ice cold water (ves-

tibular caloric nystagmus—which activates the left hemisphere)

produced an immediate and striking modulation—in some cases

a temporary reduction—in pain for the first time in years. That the

modulation occurs (beyond a placebo) is clear but it remains to be

seen whether it is always in the positive direction—which would

be clinically useful—or whether the modulation fluctuates. In

either case it is of theoretical interest because it is yet another

example of a simple procedure affecting a chronic neurological

condition of central origin.

The final, most dramatic example is provided by the recent work

of Schiff and his co-workers (Schiff et al., 2007). A patient had

been in a ‘minimally conscious state’ for some years. When deep

brain stimulation was applied to his thalamus he woke up for the

first time in 12 years and was able to communicate in a simple

manner. Schiff’s group also did DT imaging and found an actual

increase in white matter during the next few weeks of recovery

(Voss et al., 2006). Here again is a remarkable example of

plasticity of connections in the adult brain.

ConclusionsThe papers reviewed in this article have major implications—both

for clinical practice and for our theoretical understanding of the

brain.

From the clinical standpoint they suggest that MVF can

accelerate recovery of function from a wide range of neurological

disorders such as phantom pain, hemiparesis from stroke or

other brain injury or lesion, complex regional pain syndrome


(CRPS or RSD) and, possibly, even peripheral nerve or musculos-

keletal injury. It remains to be seen whether patients with other

syndromes such as focal dystonias, Dejerine-Roussy syndrome

(thalamic pain), trigeminal neuralgia and Parkinson’s disease

might benefit similarly from MVF. This is improbable but deserves

to be explored.

At a theoretical level, the findings also have a broader relevance

to our understanding of normal and abnormal brain function. The

old view of brain function—the ‘standard model’—on which the

last century of neurology has been based, is the notion that

the brain consists of a large number of highly specialized auton-

omous modules that interact very little—if at all—with each other

and are hardwired at birth. Neurological disorders, in this view,

result from relatively permanent irreversible injury to one—or

a small subset—of modules, which would explain not just the

specificity of the localizing signs and deficits but also why there

is ordinarily such little recovery of function after injury to the

brain. Knock out a module and you knock out a function forever.

This is a caricature of course and, in truth, the standard

textbook model is still largely correct and here with us to stay.

Yet it has been overstated in the past to the extent of being an

impediment to research on rehabilitation.

Indeed our results and those of our colleagues demonstrate

unequivocally that using very simple procedures one can dissolve

barriers between modules (e.g. between vision and proprioception

using MVF), between mind and body (as in McCabe’s demonstra-

tion of temperature changes in RSD) and, most remarkably,

between one brain and another—a patient literally experiencing

another’s pain in his phantom.

Such findings suggest that we need to revise the ‘serial

hierarchical modular view’ of the brain and replace it with a

new more dynamic view of brain. Instead of thinking of brain

modules as hardwired and autonomous, we should think of

them as being in a state of dynamic equilibrium with each other

and with the environment (including the body), with connections

being constantly formed and re-formed in response to changing

environmental needs. Neurological dysfunction, at least in some

instances may be caused not so much by irreversible destruction of

a module but by a functional shift in equilibrium. If so, perhaps

the equilibrium point can be shifted back to its ‘normal’ state by

hitting a ‘reset button’ using relatively simple non-invasive

procedures.

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